Film
Review
Daily

Welcome
to
the Film Review Daily website. After 71 years and 70 issues of the
ground-breaking volume kicked off by F. Maurice Speed in 1944, the
digital age caught up with us (and we with it). So, as the 70th edition – Film
Review 2014-2015 – hit the bookstalls (and all good
internet
retailers), we launched the Film Review
Daily website with up-to-date critiques by our usual panel of
discerning
and frequently movie-loving critics.

As
the
Annual has covered film releases for the last seven decades, it is only
proper
that we continue the tradition. The website is now in its third
year, and reviews old and new are being uploaded on a daily basis,
along with
an expanded In Memoriam
section, a diary of upcoming releases and the occasional book review (Michael Caine's Blowing the Bloody Doors Off...is just out).
For fans of the Annual, it should be pointed out that Mansel Stimpson
and James
Cameron-Wilson are still very much on board, with Michael Darvell
providing the obituaries.

For
those
unfamiliar with F. Maurice Speed’s publishing phenomenon, a quick
history
lesson: at its height, Film Review
shipped 250,000 copies a year and contributors included Alfred
Hitchcock, Bob
Hope, Danny Kaye, Rita Hayworth, Michael Powell, Cecil B. DeMille and
James
Mason. The second edition of the annual did so well that it provided
Maurice
with the funds to buy a house and to furnish it “lavishly,” in his own
words.

Later
on, the
book attracted the penmanship of such venerable writers as William K.
Everson,
Peter Cowie, Oswell Blakeston, Ivan Butler, Gordon Gow and Anthony
Slide. In
the intervening years, the Annual also passed through the hands of
several
publishers, starting out with Macdonald and then moving on to W.H.
Allen,
Columbus, Virgin, Reynolds & Hearn and then, finally, Signum
Books. Since
Maurice hung up his typewriter, Film
Review was edited by four other journalists (including
myself, for two
decades) and in its final years the duties were shared by Michael
Darvell and
Mansel Stimpson. Of course, you can't keep a good brand down.